Dark Awakening
by Disgraceful Duckling
Summary: Lucy finds herself in a parallel world the she quickly realizes is nothing like her own. Strange, sapient creatures are all around her and the other five children that she meets, some friend, some foe. And an organization that clearly does not mean well for the children is rising in this new world... All Lucy knows is that she has to stop it. Reboot of the discontinued original.
1. Prologue and Chapter 1

**_Prologue: Dear Diary_**

_Dear Diary,_

_It's been ten years. I spent a decade thinking that writing down my experience was stupid. I spent a decade believing that except for Dan, nothing interesting would ever happen in my life. And that wasn't exactly the best sort of interesting._

_I was a child in a lot of ways. I still _am_, legally. But aside from that, I don't think anyone can call me a child ever again._

_Not after this._

_I can't think yet. That's why I'm writing this down. I can't think until I've mulled over it in my head. It happened a week ago. Or at least, it ended a week ago._

_I fought for the first time._

_I _killed_ for the first time._

_I never feared for my life before this... It's exciting, and horrifying. I don't think I could get that much adrenaline out of an injection._

_I've been through hell, and I think I might have to go back again soon. I need to write this down while I still can. I need to process it all. So, here goes._

_This might take a while._

* * *

**_Chapter 1: The End_**

As begins many stories like this, I woke up. It was a Saturday. I was on the floor.

Allow me to explain the significance of my presence on the floor: On an ordinary night, I hardly move at all during my sleep. I go to bed, put my head on the pillow, and boom- All systems offline. But, if I'm in a bad mood, or I'm dreading the next day, I have a hard time shutting off those systems. I stay awake for anywhere between ten minutes and two hours. This could be for something as trivial as having a hard test the next day. I toss and turn and usually find myself right on the edge of my bed. It's not uncommon for me to fall off the bed upon waking up, which sometimes I am thankful for, since it jolts me awake and gives me a quicker start to the morning.

I have only woken up all the way on the floor once before. I had a nightmare that night, although I only remembered what it was about after the horrible event that happened that day. You know how some people have awesome senses of time, or well-tuned gaydars? I have an extremely accurate sense of impending doom. As far as I can tell, I only wake up like this when the next day has something horrible coming to me.

So, I woke up on the floor. That would be the first indicator of weird stuff going down. More to follow.

I picked myself off the floor, already panicking slightly. The last time this happened, Danny died. I wasn't always an only child. Who was next? My mom? My dad?

Me?

I walked downstairs to make sure my parents were around. They were routinely in the living room at this point, either reading or talking or doing paperwork or what have you. You have three guesses as to the number of people in the living room when I walked down there, and the first two don't count:

That's right, one. Including me. So I was alone, which has been terrifying for me ever since my brother died and left me, well, alone. It was a little disconcerting, to say the least. My parents were always super distant before the accident. Now they spent a great deal of time with me, partially to ward off my anxiety, and partially to ward off their own guilt. When I was younger, I assumed that they only did this to be nice to me, but as I got older it became more and more apparent that they were mostly making up for lost time because hey, who knows when Kid #2's time'll be up?

It really sucks, losing an older sibling. You were never supposed to be an only child, you always had the other kid, you never knew what it was like without the other person. That's their burden, not yours. But it doesn't always work like that.

I'm not intending to mope around, I'm just trying to give you, whoever ends up reading this diary while I'm away or after I'm dead or whatever, a handle on what I was thinking and feeling. Everything I'm about to say will make a lot more sense with that understanding. So, I'll leave my emotional exposition for later.

No one in the living room. Odd, but it happens. Trying to assume the best, I walked into the kitchen to get some breakfast, of course with the ulterior motive of looking for them. No one. I opened the fridge. It was empty.

...Huh?

I opened the cabinets and the pantry. Empty, all empty. Everything was gone. Maybe they cleared it all out and went grocery shopping? I looked for a note. I'd be damned if they took all the food and didn't leave me a note. After a thorough scan of the kitchen, however, I found no note. I went upstairs to see if they were in bed. I had to come up with some pretty far-fetched stories to explain that, though. I guess it was possible that they had cleared out all the food last night, went to bed and were going to go grocery shopping today? But why would they sleep in, in that case...?

I reached their door and knocked, but there was no response. I knocked louder. Nothing. I listened to see if there was any breathing. Still nothing. I slowly turned the doorknob, and pushed the door open. Not remotely to my surprise, I found an empty room with a perfectly made bed.

I was on the verge of hyperventilation at this point. It didn't even make sense for them to be dead, unless there was one sick serial killer in my house last night. I ran back downstairs and picked up the phone. There was no dialtone. Why was there no dialtone?

What gave my phone the right to not be giving me dialtone, damnit?

I started punching in my mother's phone number. Nothing was happening. Same with my father's. Same with 911. I caught myself breathing rapidly, and slowed it down. I took deep, deliberate breaths.

Everything was going to be okay. I was going to walk slowly over to the living room, turn on the TV, and watch something stupid and boring until my parents came back. The phone wasn't working because the power was out, that's why the lights were all off, and everything was okay.

But, if the power was off, the TV wouldn't work. I pushed the power button. As I expected, nothing happened. Whatever. I'd just read a book. I walked over to the shelf and noticed that all of our books were uniform sizes and color, and had no titles. What the hell?

I picked one out and flipped through it. My suspicions were confirmed: It was as blank as everything else in my stupid house. I may as well have been in a doll house. So much for controlled breathing.

I practically flew out of my house and down the street. Despite no lights being on in any houses, I started pounding on doors. I screamed into the houses for people to let me in. Nothing doing. I ran back inside, bolted up my stairs, dove into my room and slammed the door. I collapsed onto my bed and started rocking back and forth. I was alone.

Alone.

All alone.

The world was empty.

After a little bit, I noticed that my eyes were starting to hurt. Something was shining in them. A light. I looked over to its source... My computer screen? That couldn't be happening, the power was out. I flicked my light switch. The lights did not turn on. See? Power, down. My computer screen could not possibly be...

Glowing. I walked over to it. The closer I got, the brighter it grew. What? My fear had peaked now. It was like I wasn't controlling my own body, I was just watching it happen. I slowly reached out to touch the monitor. It only grew brighter. My room started to become pure white, everything obscured by the light.

My index finger made contact with the screen, which by now was blending in with the rest of my room. The light flared, consuming everything, and then faded, consuming me.

I was gone, my room was empty of people.

I learned later that after my departure, my monitor went black and read, "Realization Complete."


	2. Chapter 2

**_Chapter 2: The Beginning_**

I woke up for the second time that day. It was completely dark, and it felt like something was being pressed into my face, trying to smother me. I pushed myself up and realized I was face-down in dirt, explaining both concerning factors. Then I realized that it was still dark. I looked up and saw that I was in a forest, in the middle of the night.

I sat bolt upright and started to hyperventilate. I had been camping before, but with a tent, a blanket, and some other freaking _people_. I was completely alone. I was absolutely terrified. After a few minutes of not dying or being attacked, my breathing slowed down and I started to think rationally. As much as it was terrifying, being alone was probably for the best- the alternative was being mauled by a wild animal, and I think I'd rather be scared than dead.

I took a long look around me. I was sitting in an oddly circular patch of dirt in the dead-center of a clearing in a medium-density forest. Sadly, medium-density gave maximum room between trees for predators to hide and minimum visibility for me. But I could manage. I stood up to look at my strange dirt-patch and noticed that it really was a perfect circle. Around it was grass, interspersed with flowers. It was honestly quite pretty. In my dirt-patch, next to where I was sitting, was a small, dark shape. I bent down and picked it up. It was like a small rectangle with the corners carved out to leave curves, and a tiny display in the middle with a raised circle bordering it and three buttons. It had an antenna and divots in the sides. I pressed one of the two adjacent buttons and the display lit up, but showed nothing. I pressed the other, and nothing happened. I pressed the larger button on the other side and the screen got even brighter and the device started beeping at me.

"Ssssh! _Ssssssshhh!_" I hissed at it, but obviously it didn't stop its beeping. The screen kept getting brighter and for a second I thought I'd be knocked out and moved again. But instead, a shape appeared on the screen. It was just a circle. Dark, like a shadow. It got darker and darker, I guess to signify that it was getting closer. I didn't get it.

Then it got weirdly naturally dark. No longer did it look like a pixelated shape, it looked like something _on_ the screen. Literally. If I didn't know better, I'd say something were coming out of the device. And then, of course, reality had to throw me a curveball.

There _was_ something coming out of it. Just a small sphere, like a ball. I caught it as it finished coming out, feeling way too surreal. I felt all around the capsule- it was firm, and rough, like an egg, but completely spherical, like a bouncy ball. I figured for now, I wouldn't bounce it to test.

I decided then and there that I should probably give up on my confusion and disbelief. In the past 24 hours I had woken up, been totally alone, discovered my house was no longer really my house, discovered my neighborhood was empty, discovered the police no longer existed, had my computer act in ways it is impossible for it to act, passed out and woke up in a perfect circle of dirt in a forest and just collected a capsule that came out of a tiny, unidentifiable device conveniently placed right next to me. Rational thought: Good. _Conventional _thought: Probably useless.

While I was accepting the impossible, I decided I should stop deluding myself about what happened with my computer- Regardless of what caused it, the light swallowed me up and I was teleported, not physically moved. My job now was to find out where the hell I was.

Or at least, it was until the bushes 20 feet away began rustling slightly. The panic from earlier hit me again, full-force. I jumped to my feet and then froze, standing completely still, listening and hoping whatever it was in the bushes wasn't listening to _me_.

At first, nothing. Then, a very soft sobbing. A child?

Or possibly, a predatory animal mimicking a child to lure me in. I think there are animals that do that... Regardless, it kept weeping. It made little wuffling sounds between each sob.

_ Do I go and check? It could be a kid who needs my help. Or it could eat me... But, if I take this chance to run away, I could be abandoning a little kid. Not to mention, I could get attacked in the forest regardless._

_ But...If it is a predator, I'd rather take my chances running than guaranteed having to fight an animal._

Apparently, my argument had been solved for me, given that I was taking a step forward.

_ But even if it is a kid, I'm under no obligation to help them!_

Another step.

_ Why am I doing this?!_

Another step. At this point, I gave up. I was clearly going to investigate the sobbing. I don't even like kids that much, but apparently I felt it a moral imperative to help them.

I drew up to the bush the rustling was coming from. The sobbing by now was quite clear. I looked over, and saw the dark and obscured, but unmistakable, shape of a child. I kind of expected it to be a predator, just because the universe wanted to punish me for being a dumbass.

I reached a hand forward. "Hey, w-"

An earsplitting scream assaulted my ears, and the child turned very quickly to face me, continued to scream, and ran away.

"Wait!" I shouted, and began to run after her. "Hold on! I'm not trying to hurt you!"

She'd have none of that, however. She kept running and shouting and crying. She kept running between trees and turning abruptly, causing me to lose her for brief periods before I heard where she was running and could follow again. She was surprisingly fast for a little kid.

Granted, she had an advantage: She was small, so she could fit in small spaces, and I was pretty sure she had shoes, which I did not. And man, was I feeling it. Thorns, twigs and rocks, every step.

I chased her for almost five minutes before she finally tripped. As she started falling, I realized she might hit her head on a rock in the dark. I had ten feet to go and was more or less blind, so it seemed perfectly reasonable to try and catch her. Couldn't be any less rational than anything else that had happened that night, at least.

I put on a burst of speed and almost immediately tripped and flew forward. Instead of guarding against the ground, I reached forward to grab her on my way down. I secured my hands around her waist and pulled her in as I curled my legs in to shield her from the ground. My shoulder slammed into a tree root and I don't think there was a single part of my legs left un-bloodied. I'd say I regretted the decision, but really, if a little kid could concuss themselves or worse and you hurt yourself protecting them, would you regret it?

She yelled and cried and kicked and screamed for me to let her go and cried and kicked and yelled and cried and yelled and cried. I held her to make sure she didn't run off again and attempted, in vain, to convince her that I was safe.

Of course, as is appropriate in the woods at night when screaming, we heard howling. It was far away, but close enough to hear us, and eat us. We both shut the hell up.

I whispered, "You don't have to trust me, but I would hope you trust me more than a wolf. I'm going to carry you up into this tree. You're going to stay quiet. We're going to survive. Sound good?"

She nodded.

I slung her over my shoulder so I could at least use my forearm to brace against the tree to help climb. I felt around for a foothold, and once I located one, I stepped onto it and pushed. I braced with my arm, found a branch to pull myself up on, and started to climb further up. I stumbled because of the darkness a few times, but I made sure not to fall or drop her. After a bit, we made it high enough to stop. I positioned myself sitting on a thick branch with my legs over a slightly thinner one and bracing one arm and the girl on my lap, holding onto my side so as to stay in the tree.

"So, now that you're sitting on my lap eight feet off the ground in the woods in the middle of the night while hiding from animals," I whispered, "What's your name?"

"Susie," she whispered back, "What's yows?"

"Lucy. How old are you?"

She lifted her hand, but it was too dark to tell how many fingers she was holding up.

"I can't see your hand, Susie."

"I'm fow. Almose five."

Jesus christ.

She started crying again. "I downo wew I am... I downo wew my mom an dad aw..."

"Me either... I woke up and my parents were gone and my house was empty. Of everything. And no one was around in my neighborhood."

"Dey wew gone... I walked awound an den the phone started glowin. An den I woke up hew an you scawed me. An I found dis..." She produced another of those devices. This was getting freakier and freakier by the minute.

Accepting the craziness of it all, I told her to press the button on the left. She did, and the screen glowed, first bright, then brighter, and soon we had another capsule.

"Woah..." She muttered. She marveled for a while, and then put them in her pockets. She was wearing a shin-length dress. I thought it was blue, but it was too dark to tell.

I got her talking about her life before this happened, to get her mind off it all. She'd gone fishing a week ago with her parents and loved it. She'd had a playdate two days ago, and it went really well until she and her friend got in a fight over the last popsicle (which she got in the end). Her life was so normal. So was mine. Why was this happening?

We kept talking until she fell asleep, leaning her head on my shoulder. I wanted to sleep, but I couldn't without risking falling out of the tree. I sat there for an hour, the branch digging into my thighs, my arm getting tired from supporting us, entertaining myself with my thoughts and a loose twig.

After that, I started to drift off. I kept forcing myself awake, because I'd be damned if the thing that killed me today was _me_, but I was getting tired. Really tired.

_ Really _tired...


	3. Chapter 3

_** Chapter 3: An Unknown World**_

The first thing I realized when I woke up is that I had fallen asleep in the first place, which was bad. The second thing I realized is that I was still in the tree, which was good. The third thing I realized is that Susie was not in the tree, which was very, very, VERY bad.

"SUSIE-"

"Yeah?" Susie asked from the ground. "Oh!" she said, "Yow awake!"

I sighed in relief. "How'd you get down?"

"I'm good at climbin' down," she explained, "just not up."

Thank God. I started to climb down myself, and realized that my right arm wouldn't move. I looked at it and realized I had been propped up on it all night with my weight and a small child's, and the joints were now locked.

"Check out da capsow, Lucy, it's biggow!"

I reached into my pocket and noticed that the capsule in question was getting to be too big to stay there. But...wait, that didn't make sense. It was tiny... I pulled it out and saw that it had more than doubled in size.

"What the heck?" I asked. But I had bigger problems right now. My arm-functionality to height-in-tree ratio was very, very off. So, I climbed down, dealing without the use of my dominant arm, and then massaged the joints until I could put the arm down. It was no longer numb. Instead, it hurt like hell and I couldn't use it to save my life, but at least it wasn't sticking out at a 45-degree angle.

I looked back at the capsule. "How did this thing get bigger...?" I tapped it. It wasn't an inflatable material, nor did it have holes to inflate itself through. It was between the size of a chicken egg and a baseball now, and still spherical. What the heck was this thing?

We kept moving through the forest, talking about whatever came to mind. I didn't like kids that much, but I didn't hate them, and Susie seemed alright. She was pretty calm, and comparatively really nice. I contemplated picking some berries, but I realized I didn't know which would be edible, so I decided to worry about food later.

After about half an hour, we saw the edge of the woods. Once we cleared the edge, I looked around and saw that we were by a lake, and along the edge was sand, and near the sand some sparse trees. I looked down at my legs and saw that they were caked in dried blood and dirt. My arms were bad too, but not _that _bad. We walked to the lake and I washed up, and helped Susie do the same. I took another look around, and saw a shape at the other end of the lake. It was big, and rectangular, and had a pointed top, and... Holy crap, it was a building.

We were already running for it. We went on the opposite side of the trees from the lake to put some distance between the running child and the deep water. I had to go fairly slowly so Susie could keep up, so I kept looking back and forth between her in the building so I could know how far away both of them were. After a minute of running, we passed by something I sure as hell didn't expect: There was a relatively large tree, a little further out from the lake than the other five or six we'd passed, and leaning on it, with the tree between them and the sun so they were in shade, was a sleeping boy.

Another goddamn kid. He looked about 11, and he was clutching something in his hands that I couldn't quite see. As I wondered why we were all here, Susie walked up to him and woke up him up.

"Hi, I'm Susie! What's yow-"

"AH! Oh God, get away!"

He got up and started running. What?

"Wait! I wanna talk to-" She called after while starting to run, and he just kept screaming for us to go away and leave him alone. God, kids are weird.

She tried to keep chasing, and I stopped her.

"Susie, don't bother. He's old enough to handle himself, and if he wants us gone, he deserves that much. Although, I get the feeling we'll see him again."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because, something weird is happening to us, and I think he's going to realize that and then come find us. For now, let's just keep going, okay?"

"Okay..."

We kept walking, just following the edge of the lake and not paying attention to where the boy went. We walked more or less in silence, with her humming and me occasionally wondering aloud about where we were or why we were here.

After a little while, we reached the building. There wasn't a window, just a sign that read, "File Isle Inn." I stepped up to the door and listened. I heard people talking inside. I guess we weren't all alone here. I opened the door a crack and peered in. Almost immediately, I pulled my head back and stepped away, eyes wide.

In that building were monsters.

Two foot tall, green, slimy, blob-shaped, spotted, stalk-eyed monsters.

In coats and hats.

"What is it?" Susie asked.

I took a minute to calm down, reminded myself to suspend my disbelief, and told her. She didn't believe me. Of course she didn't believe me. She stepped up to the door and peered through, and did almost the same thing I did. Then she started crying. I hushed her, put on my brave face, and listened through the crack in the door.

"How are you today, Fred?"

"Great! I slept wonderfully, and for the first time in a month I actually found my hat without having to frantically search. I swear, that thing gets up and walks away while I'm asleep."

They were normal. Non-threatening. They just looked scary.

I told Susie to calm down, that I thought they were friendly monsters. She eventually did so. We took a bit to gather ourselves, to laugh at the thought of little green blob monsters actually being able to harm us in the first place, and strode in confidently.

"Excuse me, I-"

"WOAH! FRED! TIM! JILL! CHECK IT OUT! HUMANS!"

Three of them rushed over to join the first, squirming like inordinately fast slugs, slime-trails and all. "Woah!" they said, "Real humans!" "I haven't seen humans in years!" "Are you sure this isn't some new species of Digimon?" "I didn't even know what humans _looked _like!"

What was a Digimon? Whatever, I was gonna roll with the punches. "We saw another kid a little while ago, but he ran away. Who and what are you guys?" I asked.

They all stopped. "Before we answer any questions," one said, "Go find that kid. Something important is happening, and it involves you all. You have to stick together."

..._What?_ What the hell could that even mean? I turned to walk out the door and look for the kid, but the door opened, and in he came, saying, "Why on Earth do I have to stick with these- Woah."

He froze in his tracks and looked at the blob creatures. They stared at him. Susie and I stared at everyone. It continued like this for a full two minutes before anyone said anything. Surprisingly, it was the boy that broke the silence.

"Three questions," he said, quite clearly and calmly. "What are you, where am I, and why am I here?"

"I only got two answers, sorry kid. We're Numemon, and you're in the File Isle Inn, on the shore of Lake Seadra in New File Island. I have no clue why you're here, but I do know it's big. Last time kids were here, before the reboot, a lot of stuff happened. Important stuff. Bad stuff."

"Three more questions, then. What's a Numemon, where is New File Island, and what kind of 'bad stuff?'"

The Numemon he was speaking to paused for a bit, and then said in a somewhat belabored tone, "Bad stuff like evil Digimon trying to take over the world. And...you haven't been here long, have you?"

"I woke up here this morning. I currently believe myself to be dreaming, but I have felt physical pain since I woke up and I've been perfectly self-aware this whole time, so I could be awake and delusional. But I may as well see what my mind has to offer while I'm in this state. What's a Digimon?"

"I second that question," I chime in. Susie nods.

"Oh boy," the Numemon said, "this'll take a while. So, what planet are you guys on?"

"Earth," we all said.

"What country?"

"America."

"State?"

"Washington."

"City?"

"Seattle."

"Why are you asking?" I demanded.

"Because you're _wrong!_"

"So where are we? I assume we're still in America, we can't be that far from Washington."

"Wrong."

"Den what countwy?" Susie asked.

"Wrong!"

"What?" She said, confused.

"Your scale is too small! Think bigger."

"Alright," James said, "We're not on Earth. Where are we? I want to write all this down when I come out of this."

"You probably will," said the Numemon. "Now, where we are... this is going to hit you fairly hard. Or maybe it won't, given your state," he said, gesturing with an eye-stalk (gross) to the boy. "You aren't on Earth, like you just guessed. But you're really close. You're in the Digital World. We are in a world linked to yours by technology."

"Fascinating," the boy said. I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

Susie sat down. I just sort of stared. And this kid was soaking it all in like it was a New York Times bestseller. For all we knew, he thought he was going to make it _into _one.

"How can you just listen to this?!" I nearly shouted at him.

"I find it to be an interesting concept. Would you have me react differently?"

"I'd _expect _you to."

"How?"

"Probably something similar to the freak-out you had earlier! I don't get it, it seems like you've got two completely different sides of yourself going on here, and despite the screaming and running away I'm starting to think I liked the other one more."

"I regret your disappointment," he said brusquely, and moved back to this 'Digital World.' "Through what technology exactly is the Digital World linked to ours?"

The Numemon looked a bit flustered, and his eyes shifted back and forth between the boy and I before it sighed in defeat and said, "Primarily computers. That's how it all started. Nowadays we can connect through pretty much anything, as long as it's hooked up to a network. I don't know much more about it than that."

"So, you mentioned Digimon. What exactly is that?"

"Digimon is short for Digital Monster. I'm sure you can determine the rest."

"Rather," the boy said.

"Uh..." I raised my hand. "Could you spell it out for us slowpokes over here?"

"Certainly," the boy said. "If I understand correctly, this world is likely made up of data. I'm not sure how that's possible, but this may or may not even be a dream, so I'm not worried about that yet. Digimon, or Digital Monsters, inhabit this world, and seeing as they specified Numemon, I imagine there are numerous species of Digimon. Given the comparatively huge amount of evolutionary freedom they have from being constructed out of data, there are probably very, very many, all quite different."

"Right," I said. It made sense.

Well...

It didn't make even the slightest bit of sense, but I understood. I think. Susie still looked kind of lost. I explained in simpler terms. She still didn't seem to completely grasp it, but she was at least content.

"So, you Digimon are great and all that, and I'm sure this world is wonderful, but I still don't know how or why any of us are here," I wondered aloud.

"Well," said a different Numemon, clearly female, "I would guess that you're the new Chosen. Gennai probably called you."

"Chosen? Gennai?"

"You're likely the Chosen Children. Here to save us, or something like that. Gennai... Everyone knows him, everyone knows he's important, no one really knows what he _does_."

"Right... How the hell I am I supposed to save you, let alone the tinier ones?"

"I don't even know what the problem is, don't go asking _me_ how to fix it."

It dawned on me that these creatures might know what the heck these capsules were. I produced mine and noticed it was slightly bigger than this morning. I asked the Numemon what they were.

"Oh! That's... Well, wait, what? It's too small, but it looks kind of... well... hmm..."

"It's growing."

"Oh, well then. It's a Digitama."

"A Digiwhat?"

"Tama. Digimon egg. They usually appear in the Primary Village full-sized, but there's some special circumstances for the Chosen's each time around, so..."

"It came out of this," I said, showing her my little gadget.

"That's a Digivice. That'll be important later, for too many things to list. The creation codes for a specific Digitama must have been automatically run when you turned it on. Probably Gennai's doing."

"So, one of you guys will hatch out of this once it's bigger?"

"I should hope not, we can only fight in big hordes! You'll probably have a stronger Digimon than that."

"...Fight?"

"You'll probably do a lot of that, yes."

"Why?!"

"Different reason every time."

To recap: I was stranded with two young children on another, not entirely real planet, with an egg that would hatch into some monster that I'd apparently have to fight with a great deal in order to save this world somehow.

"I think I need to lie down..."

"Up the stairs. Any door. You guys probably don't have any den, go ahead and stay for free."

"What's a den?" Susie asked.

"Our money," the Numemon said.

By the time she said money I was upstairs and about to fall onto a bed.

I lay there and processed all of the information I'd received over and over again, and it made less sense each time. There was only so much this place could throw at me that I could just take. The one question I kept coming back to was simply: Why? Why me? Why here? Why this? Why does any of this even exist? I no longer cared how. Only why.

I pondered all of this for hours while the others did God knows what and got up just in time for the sun to be down.

I walked back downstairs and saw that the boy was crying on Susie's shoulder. She made a shushing gesture to me as I approached, and I nodded. She was pretty awesome for a four-year-old. I walked up to a Numemon and asked what it was about.

"He sat down for a while, considered everything he'd heard, and realized it wasn't a dream. His name is James, by the way. He didn't mention it till a while after you'd gone up. How was your nap?"

"I didn't take one," I said, chuckling. "I just needed to lie down, is all. Think about things. It's not every day you wake up in a new world."

"It almost seems like it is, for us. The world has been rebooted so many times..."

"Rebooted? By who?"

"I think it just does that. Not sure why. Maybe to get bigger, since we never really die."

"What happens if you're killed, then?"

"We become Digitama. We grow up again. We have a fresh start, if we want it."

"You keep all your memories?"

"Mhm."

"So... what... what happens if I die?"

"I'm not really sure. My guess, frankly, is that you just die."

"Of course."

James and Susie walked over. We all talked. Not about anything important, we just talked, until finally we were all so tired we had to sleep. Susie asked if she could stay with me, and I said okay. I asked James if he wanted to crash with us.

"I suppose, since we apparently have to stick together."

We all went to bed, Susie and I sharing one and James taking a cot on the other side of the room. I looked at my Digitama. It was a bit bigger, and definitely more egg-shaped now. It was roughly the size of a grapefruit, when this morning it was more like a small-ish orange. It was reddish orange, with darker red circles of various sizes across it. I set it near the bed, making sure it didn't roll away, and went to sleep.

I dreamed of Danny, something I hadn't done in a few years. I dreamed about playing games with him, fighting with him, falling asleep talking to him when we shared a room, and about his death. I wasn't there when it happened. He was hanging out with some friends a month or so after he turned 12, by a lake. He jumped in, swam a decent way out. Something distracted his friends for a few seconds and when they looked back, he was just gone. Authorities theorized that something had dragged him under and he didn't have time to react. Nothing of him was recovered. I heard about it that evening and shut myself in my room for two days.

It had been five years since then. I turned 14 about a month before arriving in the Digital World.

I woke up to sunlight hitting my eyes through the window and sat up. I looked down at Susie, who was still asleep. I realized then that it was my job to protect these two. No matter what this world threw at us, I had to keep them safe. It wasn't a maternal instinct thing or anything like that. Someone had to protect them, and given the circumstances, I knew it had to be me.

I looked at the Digitama. It was now the size of a football. _How big is this thing going to get? _I wondered, hoisting myself out of bed and going downstairs.

"You're up!" said a Numemon.

I nodded, and asked about food. The Numemon handed me a plate of eggs and bacon, saying he'd figured we'd be up about now. As I was about to start eating, something dawned on me.

"Do you have earth animals in the Digital World?"

"No, why?"

"...Then what are these bacon and eggs made of?"

The other two children walked downstairs and received their own plates. I decided not to care about the contents, and just ate.

"So, how close would you say these Digitama are to hatching?" I asked.

The Numemon told me to feel the egg, and I did. Something was moving.

Upon my report of this, the Numemon said, "Soon." And lord, did he mean it.

We talked more as we finished our food, and just as Susie took her last little bite of bacon, James' egg cracked. Mine and Susie's followed suit.

We all looked down at our Digitama, shaking with anticipation as the cracks on the Digitama got bigger and bigger and we could start to hear sounds from within.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Chapter 4: And Then There Were Ten**_

I almost couldn't believe what I was witnessing. This wasn't anything like what TV shows tell you. It wasn't like a cracks-get-bigger-baby-bird-pops-out thing, it was like a cracks-slowly-and-arduously-get-bigger-as-egg-tiss ue-seeps-through-a-bit-and-squeaking-noises-occur- before-finally-one-small-piece-separates-revealing -a-tiny-red-eye-the-owner-of-which-struggles-to-pu sh-off -another-piece-of-egg-and-finally-after-over -a-minute-there's-enough-of-a-gap-to-lift-the-thin g -out-but-you're-not-quite-sure-you-want-to sort of thing.

Of course, as soon as the thing uttered it's first post-egg squeak I couldn't help but lift it out of the shell and bounce it up and down in my hands. The baby Digimon was very nearly a five-inch-diameter sphere with short black fur, bright red eyes and tall, round ears. It was... the cutest throw pillow I had ever seen.

"What am I gonna name you, little... uh..."

"Well," a Numemon said, "We only go by different names because we're a bunch of Numemon in one workplace. Most Digimon just go by their species name, as large groups of the same species aren't particularly common. So it probably would prefer Botamon if it had the capacity to understand names right now.

"It?"

"A Digimon's sex is nigh impossible to determine as a baby, and doesn't much matter anyway, even later in life."

I looked over at the other too. Susie was squealing over an oversized blue pill with beady black eyes, long, zig-zaggy ears and thick, white tufts of fur all over. James had his hands full with a rather exuberant blue ball with a tuft of either fur or skin on its head and remarkably defined facial features compared to the other two.

It made eye contact with me for a few seconds, and then it opened its mouth to produce a burble of noise: "Hi! I'm Chibomon!"

...Not exactly the "goo goo ga ga" I was expecting.

"You can talk?" James asked the apparent 'Chibomon.'

"You can, why shouldn't I?" the Chibomon retorted, grinning. "I'm a higher stage than most other new-born Digimon. In-fact, I'm a higher stage than most _Chibomon_. I'm kind of surprised at the anomaly."

"Wait, how do you know that?" I asked it.

"How do you mean?"

"How do you know... anything? How do you even know what species you are?"

"I'm a living being, but I am, in fact, data. In a world made of data. Our ability to transfer information is quite different from yours. I won't say better, but certainly faster."

"So, these two can't talk?" I asked, gesturing to Botamon and whatever Susie's Digimon was.

"I would think not. They barely have mouths."

"...Oh. So, why are you..." I searched for a good word.

"A higher stage?" I nodded, and he continued, "I don't know exactly. I suspect because the group needed someone to explain some things. Chibomon are usually about as eloquent as Botamon and Yuramon, but they sometimes occur as In-Training Digimon, instead of Baby."

I made a perplexed face at him, and he elaborated.

"There are six stages of Digimon evolution: Baby, In-Training, Child, Adult, Perfect and Ultimate. The process of moving forward through these stages is called Digivolution, whereas backwards is simply 'reverting.' Chibomon is usually a Baby form, but as with all Digimon, strange things can occur. I, instead, am an In-Training, and will Digivolve straight to Rookie, whereas when they Digivolve, they'll go to my stage. The benefit to this is that I am already more or less self sufficient and can give you all most of the information you could need, such as what I'm telling you now. The downside is that my code is less... well, stable. It will be harder for me to hold a higher form than this than the other Digimon, but not impossible."

"So, do you know what you'll Digivolve into?" I asked him.

"No clue," he answered, "My evolution line favors DemiVeemon, or, in my case, the Rookie form, Veemon, but it varies. I could become something completely unrelated to my current form. The same is true of Botamon and Yuramon, and the Numemon here as well. Their line favors Monzaemon, but they can each become any number of things."

"So," a Numemon spoke up, "Not to ruin a good thing, but... The last time any children came to the Digital World, things went downhill fast, and they went downhill on File Island first. If I were you, I'd get a move on. You won't find anything out staying here. It's almost midday, you have plenty of time to get things done."

I guess it was about time to get moving. I hadn't really processed that I'd need to go anywhere.

"Uh... alright. Let's get going, I guess. Thank you so much for your hospitality, Numemon."

"Thanks!" Susie said.

James gave them a half-wave, half-salute gesture and bowed his head to them before leaving.

We walked through the door to the hotel, and I saw the world around us from a very different perspective. It was no longer new and exciting. Now it was daunting, and very, _very_ big. But for the sake of the two children with me, it was sort of my job now to remain undaunted. I would have to tackle this world head-on.

"Susie," I said.

"Yeah?"

"Pick a direction, and let's go."

Ten minutes later, we were at the base of a small, but fairly steep hill with some trees on the top. "Climb it, or go around?" I asked.

"I say we climb it," said James.

"Me too!" said Susie.

"What are you, exactly?" asked a voice that belonged to none of us.

I shushed James and Susie and listened up the top of the hill.

"I'm DemiMeramon! You met me as Mokumon."

I slowly climbed the hill, gesturing for the other two to stay back. When I got close to the top, I knelt down and peered up. There was a teenage girl with short, red hair talking to a floating fireball with a face. Behind her was a figure I couldn't quite make out. I motioned for James and Susie to come up, and then I stood, allowing the unknown people to see me.

They didn't notice.

I walked closer. Still nothing.

"Hey," I said.

The girl nearly snapped her neck turning to look at me, and the teenage boy behind her almost screamed.

"Who are you?!" the girl yelled.

"Relax. I'm Lucy. This is a Botamon, this is James and Chibomon, and that's Susie, and I believe a Yuramon."

Susie and James waved.

"Greetings," Chibomon said.

"You're lost like us?" the boy asked.

"Just like you," I responded. "So, we've told you who we are. Your turn."

"My name is Ben. I don't know what this thing's name is, but it hasn't hurt me yet and it came out of my little gadget, so I'm looking after it."

"I'm Jack," the girl said, "and this is apparently DemiMeramon. He's rather toasty. I'm still kind of in shock because only a few minutes ago did he stop being tiny and unable to talk, and I still don't know what he is." Seeing my confusion at her name, she added, "Jack is short for Jacqueline. Most people just get that, sorry."

"So, can we agree that this incline is not the best for talking?" I asked. They nodded, and we proceeded back down the hill and sat down.

"Do you three know anything about where we are? We've been walking for a day and half nothing."

I looked to James, since he seemed to be able to spout information cohesively. He explained all about Digimon, and the Digital World, and the tiny bit we had about 'Chosen Children,' and the apparent threat at hand.

Jack and Ben did not seem to take the information too well.

"Why... why are we here? What the hell can we do to stop the threat? Why us specifically?" Ben asked rhetorically, fighting tears. "Why _me_? I've never done _anything_ useful!"

"All I wanna know is how we get back," Jack muttered, "Like hell I'm gonna do this world a favor, didn't even warn me about any of this..."

"I don't know why we're here, or how we get back. But I know there _is _a reason. And a way home," I said. They both nodded solemnly. "The best we can do now is survive until we figure something out."

"Speaking of survival," Jack said, "Ben and I have exhausted the snacks I had in my bag, and I'm getting hungry. I personally could stand to find some food."

I remembered the berries and plants and such in the forest I woke up in, but Susie beat me to it. Before I knew it, we had a plan to walk back to the lake and follow it to the forest to search for food.

As we walked, we swapped stories about how we all got here. I told them about how I ran around my neighborhood and finally locked myself in my room and got pulled in by my computer. James apparently had returned from a trip to visit his grandparents and switched on the TV to tune out his parent's arguing, and he kept watching after they went to bed to de-stress and eventually the screen went white and pulled him in. When he found the device and a capsule came out, he passed out against a tree.

Susie was about to go catch the school bus even though her parents weren't there to walk her to the bus stop and she was worried, and ran back to call her mom one last time and the phone pulled her in.

Jack had just finished packing for a camping trip and was about to bus out to meet her friends and drive over to the campsite, and tried to look online for where exactly the stop was.

Ben woke up in his bedroom, and picked up his laptop, intending to spend the greater part of the day alone, in the dark, on the internet. His proclamation of uselessness seemed like an exaggeration at first.

We reached the lake and began to walk along it, talking about Seattle, since we all seemed to be from it, and tried to figure out if we knew any of the same people. After a few minutes, I noticed a shadow deep in the water. Susie apparently noticed it too.

"What's dat?" she asked.

"Judging by the shape and relative size," James answered, "some sort of giant sea snake Digimon, I would guess."

"A... a what? Is it gowna howt us?" She started to tear up, clearly frightened.

"No, Susie," Jack said, glaring at James, "it won't hurt us, because it's too far down in the water to possibly notice us. We'll be just fine, I promise. James, couldn't you have managed to say something like that _before_ scaring her?"

James sneered at her, and started to mumble something about how he couldn't have known something or other, but before anyone could really know what he was saying, a huge jet of water burst out of the lake with the kind of roar a waterfall makes, and then splashed back down, spraying us and causing gigantic ripples in the lake.

After a good ten seconds of screaming and even more hyperventilating and shouting, I realized that amongst the huge puddles on the ground from the burst of water, there were also several fish. Like, Earth fish, not some sort of scary, sentient Digifish. Confusing, since the Numemon had said Earth animals weren't in this world. I pointed this out to the others. Jack, after having a bit more time to calm down, pulled out a small, collapsible spear and excitedly ran over and impaled the fish, and then pulled out a spare shirt from her bag and wrapped them up.

"Dinner is officially secured, my friends!"

On the way to the forest, we decided we'd go in to collect firewood, and then set it up by the lake, cook and eat the fish and sleep there, and continue through the forest the next day. And that's just what we did. We took the time to ask Chibomon and DemiMeramon what berries were edible and pick enough of those for breakfast the next day, which took a while, and then went to the lake and cooked the fish.

As I ate, I looked into the lake. It was starting to get dark, and the sunset reflected off the water such that I couldn't see far, so the serpent was not visible. I raised the fish like I would a glass for a toast, and muttered a quiet, "Thanks," before finishing my food and lying down on the grass to sleep.


End file.
